eggshells all around us
by HopefulVoice
Summary: Myka comes out to her parents. High school AU.


Some people are really good liars. Some people can lie like breathing, they can look you straight in the face and sell you on a green sky and a moon made of cheese and send you away happy.

Myka is not one of those people.

She hates lying. When it's necessary (and she strives to make it as rare an occurrence as possible), she can put one over on someone who doesn't know her very well. But when it's someone she loves? She's basically screwed.

So when her parents bring it up, so casual it must be feigned, she knows what's coming.

"You've been out a lot lately," her mom says. She shuffles the sugar back across the table and continues, "Are you seeing someone new?"

Everything on her feels tense, shoulders to toes. "Um. Yes." God, she really wishes her voice didn't sound like that, all humming with anxiety. She heaps her glass full of ice and very slowly pours root beer into it, clinging to the excuse to keep her back to the table for as long as she can.

"That's nice," her mom says. She sounds so warm and pleased and so fucking happy for her that Myka wishes she could turn around and tell them she'd met this guy, see, and he's really handsome and smart and that everything is really innocent but sometimes they go sit in the park and kiss and then he slicks Chapstick on her lips before they go back to class. But she can't say that, and she can't even get away with vague because her mom says, "Tell us all about him."

Myka sends a panicked glance toward the open door, but that's _so_ not an option. She takes a breath, a deep one, and tries to remember what Helena said. _It's better just to lay it on the table, darling. Don't make a big deal of it. Absolutely no blubbering_. "Actually," she says, "it's a her. Helena. Her name is Helena."

She can only take the silence for about a minute before she turns; her glass is half full of soda and half of foam, and it settles, fizzing slowly, while her parents stare at her. It's fizzed out, barely covering 2/3 of the ice by the time anyone speaks.

"Do you mean," her mom says carefully, "that you have a new friend named Helena?"

"No. I mean. I have a girlfriend. Named Helena."

This is really not going well. Myka's parents are silent, her mother gaping at her, her fingers fluttering and twitching against the table, her father's hands tight on his paper, smearing and creasing the newsprint. _Oh God oh God oh God_.

"How long has this been going on?" Her mom again. Her father is mute, stone faced, and looking at him hurts.

"A couple of months. I mean. If you're asking how long I've known I'm-" Myka can't bring herself to say anything about being gay or bi, so she waves her empty hand uselessly and says, "about six months. But. Dating for almost two months."

"Are you-" her mom starts, and then stops, her cheeks pinched.

Myka's pretty sure she was going to ask if she's having sex with Helena, actually. The blood that's heating the slope of her cheeks plummets to her stomach, makes her nauseas and light-headed. Her fingers are tight and cold on the still-not-full glass in her hand, and her mouth is dry but she's pretty sure she'll choke if she tries to take a sip, so she stays still.

Her mom finally sucks in a breath through her nose and says, weakly, "Sure? Because you're young, Myka. Sometimes you can get pulled into things when you don't really know what's happening."

She looks so fucking earnest. She really wishes she could say she wasn't sure, that maybe she was wrong, but she knows how she feels when Helena's touching her, so she can't. "Yeah. I'm sure."

"It could be a phase," she says. So hopeful, it claws at Myka's chest.

"It's not."

Her dad still hasn't said anything, but his fingers are white and splotched red against the sport's section. The Brancos won something. Good to know.

"Is this about Sam?" More fucking hope, tinged with desperation. It hurts way more than Myka thought it would. "Because there are other boys, Myka. Just because things didn't go the way you wanted them to with Sam doesn't mean-"

Her mother doesn't finish. She's not surprised, because the end of that line is probably "doesn't mean you have to go fuck women," only in mom-terms and less crude.

"It's not," she says. "It doesn't have anything to do with Sam, it's just me. I'm just. I like girls."

Silence.

"I'm sorry," she offers.

She can actually hear the carbonation in her soda, the little bubbles rising to the surface and popping.

"But you can't be sure," her mom says. "You're only eighteen, Myka. And it's really easy to get confused about things. This could just be a thing that you're going through. I know how upset you were about Sam." Her fingers squeak against the wood of the counter, sweat-slick and bent up, twisted, tense. They don't look like her mom's hands, and it's kind of freaking her out. "We can get you counseling," she says. "We didn't realize you were having such a hard time with it. I think Carl knows a guy."

Myka tries really hard not to take it personally.

She pretty much fails. "I don't. I don't need to see a shrink, mom. There's nothing wrong with me. I just. I like girls. I like Helena. It's not about Sam. It's not. I'm not confused, ok? I just, I like someone. Who is a girl."

"But how," she says, pleading, "how can you be sure?"

Myka's dad is so still that the paper doesn't even rustle. She fights back the sudden, alien urge to throw her glass at it, splatter the grayish spread with her soda and get a fucking reaction.

She changes her mind when she realizes what kind of reaction she could get.

"I just am," she says. "I'm sorry."

They spend another half hour like that, with her mom barely veiling the diagnostic questionnaire for depression and Myka apologizing, saying she's sure, apologizing, saying she's sure until her throat aches and she can't feel anything but the hollow, sick pit in her stomach. When her mom gives up she says, "I think. I'm going to spend the night at Pete's tonight. We have. Science."

It's a terrible excuse, but her mom snatches it up anyway. She calls Helena from her bedroom while she packs and tries not to get pissed off when Helena asks about shotguns, because her dad in a righteous fury might hurt less than him looking through her like maybe she's ceased to exist sometime in the last hour.

What she doesn't realize until she gets home the next day, with Helena's handprints bruised into her hips and Helena's scent lingering on her clothes, is that the only thing her father has said to her in the last thirty-six hours is: "Don't tell your sister."


End file.
